So we’ve been teasing our new list this week. Yesterday we had some readers guess that the list was of “Best Living Guitar Players,” and, hey, that’s close! It’s actually The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists. (Worth mentioning: the awesome above banner was done by the Derek Riggs to our Iron Maiden, Rodney Githens from Vertebrae 33.)

So what does that mean? Well, there were three qualifications for a musician to be eligible for this list:

• The musician in question has to play metal. (Duh.)
• The musician in question has to play guitar. (Double-duh.)
• The musician in question has to have released a new recording within five years of May 1, 2011 (thus, no Dimebag).

We didn’t invite any industry peeps or musicians to vote on this list — it was decided solely by The MetalSucks Get High Council. So if you love the list, you’ll have us to thank, and if you hate the list, you’ll have us to blame.

We obviously can’t tell you who’s on the list just yet, but we can give you this hint: Dan Donegan’s name never even came up.

It starts Monday. Get ready to be angry.

-Axl, Vince, and Everyone at MetalSucks

Art of Sucking are the first sign to a new label owned by the two members of Disturbed whose names people actually know (that would be David Draiman and Dan Donegan, not Anonymous Drummer and Dude from Union Underground), and if you’re thinking “Hm, Disturbed are the worst thing to happen to humanity since the plague, so I bet they have shitty taste in music and signed an awful fucking band,” well, you’re right. Art of Sucking are fucking awful. It’s like Nickelback tried to rip-off A Perfect Circle and did what they do best, which is fail at everything that isn’t fooling lobotomized rubes into thinking they’re worth a damn.

But Art of Sucking’s new video, for “Die Sucking,” is kind of interesting, and by interesting, I mean in a “staring at one spot on the sidewalk for five minutes” kinda way. No joke, at least fifty percent of this thing’s running time is devoted to shots of the singer walking. I would have loved to have seen the production schedule for this thing: “Day 1, band performance. Day 2, dude walking — locations TBD.”

At least Hard Eight had the good sense to have their guy running and not just walking. Difference is, someone was paid to make this piece of crap:

I am going to hire a gypsy to put a curse on this band so that everything everywhere smells like farts to them always. It may not prevent them from making terrible music, but it will make me laugh.

-AR

[via Noisecreep]

Because we at the MS Mansion keep no secrets about our un-ironic love of ’80s hair/glam and because we can never seem to resist a Carlos Ramirez-penned Top <insert here> list at Noisecreep, we give you The Top Ten Musicians with Hair Metal Pasts.

There are a few usual suspects whose Aqua Net pasts have been well-documented here and elsewhere (hiya Rivers Cuomo and studly stud Butch Walker) but there are a few surprises in there as well. Like Disturbed’s Dan Donegan… what I wouldn’t give to hear a Vandal recording! In fact, if someone wants to email those to us I’ll gladly post them for all of us to laugh / sneer at / enjoy.

Take a look at the list, then come back here and tell us why hair metal sucks.

-VN

An interview with Disturbed’s Dan Donegan, from We Love Metal (by way of Blabbermouth)… the debate over what is or is not “nu metal” continues!

We Love Metal: A lot of people on the Internet call DISTURBED “nu” metal. Do you consider yourself nu metal?

Click to read more…

Are there any Arrested Development fans in the house? Remember the episode where Tobias (David Cross) buys a gay bar and then hires a group of male strippers to pose as a dancing street gang to try and clean up the streets of real gangs (e.g., Bloods, Crips, etc.), and then they all get shot as Tobias screams out “We’ve miscalculated!”?

I don’t know what just made me think of that.

ANYWAY, I thought the whole Dillinger Escape Plan/Disturbed beef was over and done with (If you’ve been living under a rock and have no idea what I’m talking about, you can read about the conflict here, here, and here. If you think that this is petty bullshit and you can’t believe that we’re reporting on this for the umpteenth time, then you’re reading the wrong website and I think you’d feel more comfortable here.). But I guess the fellas in Disturbed felt like they had to get the last word.

Click to read more…

Alright alright alright. A valued friend just e-mailed me to say he couldn’t believe we were keepin’ our mouths shut about this whole Dillinger Escape Plan vs. Disturbed feud that seems to have suddenly broken out. I can’t speak for Vince, but I actually didn’t write anything ’cause I couldn’t find a way to make the whole thing funny.

Well, fuck funny. Now I’m just gonna say something.

The Dillinger Escape Plan wins. Anyone who says otherwise has never seen them live. Period.

Click to read more…